Mastering the art of being happily single 101

You’ve gotten out of a relationship and now you’re single, struggling to adapt to the single life or maybe you’ve been single for too long now and it’s frustrating. There are many articles out there teaching and telling us how to take care of our relationships with our partners and how to live happily ever after with our spouses but nobody tells us how to take care of our relationships with ourselves when we’ve got no one to call ‘the one’. The single life just appears to be a long dark lonely path, which we often try to comfort ourselves by lying to the people around that we are happy walking down alone, knowing deep down that it’s only a big fat ass lie. We feel this way only because we haven’t mastered the art of being single, so it’s not about the romance movies and books we read or the fact that all our friends are either married or in happy relationships, it’s the fact that we still don’t know and realise that being single is an art, a beautiful art that needs to be mastered, it’s the art of being absolutely and totally in love with yourself. We can be truly happy deep down, be enough for ourselves, and be able to walk down our own paths holding our own hands, comforted by self-love and acceptance.

A year ago, I made a decision to leave a five year long relationship. It was hard to decide to leave the relationship in the relationship despite the toxicity of it, because I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like if I didn’t have him to go on morning jogs with, to take me on long romantic walks, to eat lunch with, play games, fight, chat for long hours, watch movies and spend every hour of everyday with. I didn’t know who I was without him and it only felt worse when I finally broke up with him. It felt like I had to start my whole life all over again after being so deep into a routine with him. I was unhappy, lonely and bored all the time. I was lost and without a purpose, and for these reasons I found myself almost calling my ex boyfriend several time, to beg for forgiveness and to ask him to take me back. I didn’t care that our relationship was unhealthy or that I broke up with him for a reason. I just wanted to go back to the time when I knew who I was and no one asked me if I had a boyfriend ‘now’ because everyone knew.
I don’t recall exactly after how many ‘almost calls’, self-beat downs, or times I cried before deciding that it was time to move on, and I can’t tell you how many times I had promised myself to move on, before actually deciding to move on, but I can tell you that it wasn’t easy at all.

The first thing I did whie laying down on my couch with so much determination was google the words ‘how to be single’ and a movie popped out, it was called ‘how to be single’. Right there on that couch, I settled into the movie, laughing and crying as I watched. After the movie, I was more motivated to move on, but it didn’t last for too long, I was back to square one, the moment I received a call from my ex-boyfriend telling me how much he missed me. I missed him too, I wanted him back, I wanted the life we had together back, but I couldn’t tell him that, because I was at that point of my life where I was more broken by the fact that I had no idea who I was or what I loved on my own than I was broken by the break up. More than anything, I wanted to love myself, with or without anyone to make me feel good about myself.

I took another bold step after, I deleted and blocked my exes number, deleted pictures of us together and cleared all of our texts in one night, then I cried myself to sleep.
I found a hobby, I wasn’t very good at it, but I loved painting, I loved going to art shows and spending hours painting blurbs in my backyard. I found that I actually could write decent poems and stories. I never realised how much I was capable of loving and how artsy I was until I took time to get to know myself on a deeper level. With time, I began to love my own company, just me doing what I loved, It was amazing. My journey to self-discovery was like meeting someone new, someone absolutely wonderful.

Through this journey of self-discovery and love, I picked up a few tips on how to be happily single.

It’s all about determination. Make up your mind a thousand times to be happy, and you can be truly happy. You can only be happy, if you convince yourself that you deserve happiness, you don’t deserve to be unhappy, and you truly want to be happy. No one else can tell you this, if you don’t believe it.

Do not hate on couples who are happy together. You don’t need to bring down other people to feel better about yourself. Don’t try to convince them that being in a relationship makes them unhappy or that it’s so much better to be single. Appreciate other people’s relationships and treasure the relationship with yourself.

Spend time alone often and at the same time spend time with the people you love and the people they love. It can be hard watching your friends and family in happy relationships but you have to let them know that it’s okay to love other people around you, because you’re happy and you want them to be happy too. You’d be surprise how much happiness you can get from making other people happy.

Lastly, do not get too comfortable being single and shut down your heart to external love. Remember that the purpose of being happily single is not to shut out relationships with other persons forever, it’s to help you love people better and for others to be able to love you better in a way that makes you happier and allows you to stay connected with who you are as an individual. We must never give up on love, whether it’s loving ourselves, or another human, for love will never give up on us, and shutting it out will only break us.

Mastering the art of being happily single is a journey I can ensure would change our lives, whether we are in happy relationships with other persons or not. It’s about knowing who you are as individuals and loving ourselves in a deeper sense. The path through the single life isn’t all rosy and bright, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel, there’s a beautiful, amazing person waiting down there for your unconditional love, and that’s YOU.